


all the light on me feels like debt

by pyrophane



Category: Triple H (Korea Band)
Genre: Alternate Universe - 365 FRESH, Day At The Beach, Multi, Pre-OT3, Unresolved Sexual Tension
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-12-25
Updated: 2017-12-25
Packaged: 2019-02-19 13:47:36
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,157
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/13124991
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/pyrophane/pseuds/pyrophane
Summary: They’re both waving their arms at Hwitaek, smiling wide enough he can make it out from here, shouting something that he can’t hear over the hammer of his own heart in his ears, but he thinks it’s probably all the same thing, anyway.





	all the light on me feels like debt

**Author's Note:**

  * For [rainingover](https://archiveofourown.org/users/rainingover/gifts).



> hi rainingover! your triple h prompts were amazing, i hope you enjoy this treat! 
> 
> contains brief references to suicidal ideation as per hyojong's character in the 365 fresh mv.

 

 

 

 

 

Another day in summer, indiscernible from the last. The second week of their second life. The sun’s teetering on the edge of noon, the sky bluer than anything Hwitaek’s ever seen, so blue it doesn’t seem real, an unbroken shell curving over their heads.

The beach is hidden behind a ridge of rock bluffs and it’s deserted when Hwitaek pulls up at the junction between the dirt path and the shore. Hyuna kicks off her heels and curls her toes into the sand, and Hyojong drifts towards the water’s edge, staring out at the horizon with an intensity that doesn’t match the slouch of his shoulders. Hyuna’s mouth only tightens a fraction, the worry she never lets herself show anymore seeping through, but Hwitaek’s already on his feet, moving after Hyojong. Turns out you can’t make it through a couple of joint near-death experiences without starting to pick up on these things.

Hwitaek steps over a bony cluster of bleached-white driftwood. Underfoot, the damp sand where Hyojong’s standing is cool and firm.

“I’m not gonna drown myself right here, if that’s what you’re thinking.” Hyojong doesn’t bother looking at him. In direct sunlight his profile is almost too sharp, all tapering angles from the jut of his jaw to his exposed collarbones.

“Do you want to?” Hwitaek has no idea why he’s asking.

Hyojong shrugs. “There’s a lot of things I want.”

“Yeah?” Hwitaek’s fingers itch, the way they do when the urge to steal something rises, and he jams them in his pockets. _What do you know about wanting,_ he doesn’t say.

Back when they’d first met, scream of tires on asphalt and Hyojong’s body sprawled out in front of them and Hyuna sucking in a breath in the passenger seat beside him, though he hadn’t known her name, then, not yet, he’d split his knuckles open on Hyojong’s cheekbone and all Hyojong had done was laugh and laugh and laugh. But sometimes he’ll watch the way Hyojong and Hyuna tilt towards each other and longing will crawl up his throat, though just who he’s jealous of he isn’t quite certain.

They’re all supposed to be dead, anyway. He still remembers the water seaming over his head, the breathless icy shock of it before he passed out. The end of his old life. He isn’t Hyojong; doesn’t look out at the deep water with hunger, but he thinks he understands something of the feeling.

“Sure,” says Hyojong. He turns to face Hwitaek, at last, and tilts his head in the direction he came from. “Hyuna’ll get mad at us for leaving her out, you know.”

Hwitaek looks over his shoulder. Hyuna’s hoisted herself up onto the bonnet, legs dangling off the edge of the hood, the perfect arch of her bare throat glimmering as she tips her head back.

“You’re the one who fucked off as soon as we got here to stare weirdly at the water,” says Hwitaek.

For some unfathomable reason, Hyojong laughs, a surprisingly good-natured sound considering the mouth that’s shaping it. He doesn’t touch Hwitaek as he passes him to head back towards Hyuna, and it bothers Hwitaek, that he notices this, the absence of contact. Hwitaek doesn’t move. Keeps looking out across the ocean, watching the waves break against each other.

When he glances back, Hyuna has her fingers hooked through Hyojong’s belt loops, tugging him close, and for once Hyojong looks halfway alive. But before Hwitaek can avert his gaze again Hyuna’s eyes flick towards him, and she lets go of Hyojong to beckon him over, so he goes. “Where are we going next?” she says, as he draws near.

Hyojong rests his palm on the sun-warmed metal of the hood. “Anywhere you like.”

Anywhere Hyuna likes, so long as it’s forward, so long as none of them are looking back. They don’t talk about anything from before the night Hwitaek nearly ran them both over. In a way it’s a comfort; the only history they know is what they have with each other. It’s enough for Hwitaek. It has to be enough.

“Mmm,” she says. The gloss on the divot of her bottom lip glints. “It’s a big world. I’ll have to think about it.”

“Hwitaek,” says Hyojong, the first time he’s spoken since Hwitaek joined them, and Hwitaek shifts to face him. There’s a bright, coppery smile in Hyojong’s voice like an open cut. “What do you want?”

Hwitaek opens his mouth and finds himself unable to respond. Behind Hyojong an expanse of ocean mirrors the brutally cloudless day, blue as far as the eye can see. They could be the only three people left in the world.

Hyojong takes a step forward, and then another. The fender juts into the backs of Hwitaek’s thighs, and he realises, belatedly, that Hyojong’s crowding him against the car, between the vee of Hyuna’s legs. Her hand comes down to rest on Hwitaek’s shoulder, thumb tucked behind his neck in a grip a shade too tight to be casual, and Hyojong’s eyes are half-lidded, dark. Impossible to look away. Hwitaek’s afraid to move, frozen mid-exhale, the moment something like a cup full to the brimming, ready to spill over at the slightest movement.

Then Hyojong blinks, and the possessed intensity of his gaze snaps like an elastic stretched to breaking. He shifts back, and the pressure of Hyuna’s hand lifts, and Hwitaek can finally breathe again. He’s lightheaded, reeling like he’s just woken up from a long dream. The ocean is roaring like static in his ears.

“I’m going for a swim,” he announces to nobody in particular.

Hyuna hums. Hyojong’s looking out at the ocean again but it’s less ravenous, more considering. A little lighter. Laughter underneath the surface.

Hwitaek peels off his shirt. The water is cold where it laps at his ankles, almost unbearably so. He wades deeper, the ocean floor sloping gently downwards, until he’s treading water to stay afloat. Then he sucks in a lungful of air and dives in.

The world falls silent when he goes under and for a moment his vision whites out and he’s weightless, suspended in motion, before sensation rushes back in, water pressing down on him from every direction. Salt stings his eyes but he keeps them open, and when the burn sawing through his lungs grows too serrated to ignore he kicks back upwards, gasping and coughing as soon as his head breaks the surface of the water. He shoves his wet hair out of his eyes.

Over on the beach he can see the red halo of Hyuna’s hair and the pale gleam of Hyojong’s, catching the light. They’re both waving their arms at him, smiling wide enough he can make it out from here, shouting something that he can’t hear over the hammer of his own heart in his ears, but he thinks it’s probably all the same thing, anyway. He starts swimming back to the shore.

 

 

 

 

 

**Author's Note:**

> i'm on twitter [@juncheolsoo](https://twitter.com/juncheolsoo), come say hi!


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